Fantasy football knits friends together over years

Updated 5:29 pm, Monday, September 30, 2013

Shane Murchison (left), Pete Murchison and Tom Barentston prepare for the Lou & Robbo league draft last month in Fremont.

Shane Murchison (left), Pete Murchison and Tom Barentston prepare for the Lou & Robbo league draft last month in Fremont.

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok, The Chronicle

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The Murchisons look over their draft options on a laptop computer.

The Murchisons look over their draft options on a laptop computer.

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok, The Chronicle

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Dogpile League members gather to watch the Sunday games on a bank of nine televisions, including a 125-inch HD screen, at Mark Kamal's house in Orinda.

Dogpile League members gather to watch the Sunday games on a bank of nine televisions, including a 125-inch HD screen, at Mark Kamal's house in Orinda.

Photo: Courtesy Mark Kamal

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Mark One: Mark Kamal's league started with three small televisions wired together throughout the house. He now has nine televisions, including a 125'' HD projection screen.

Mark One: Mark Kamal's league started with three small televisions wired together throughout the house. He now has nine televisions, including a 125'' HD projection screen.

Photo: Courtesy Mark Kamal

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Mark Kamal wears a Redskins jersey at a Dogpile League draft in the early 2000s.

Mark Kamal wears a Redskins jersey at a Dogpile League draft in the early 2000s.

Photo: Courtesy Mark Kamal

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Above, a lighthearted award is given to the player who shows the least patience on draft day.

Above, a lighthearted award is given to the player who shows the least patience on draft day.

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok, The Chronicle

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This pigeon is awarded to the last-place team in the East Bay Football League.

This pigeon is awarded to the last-place team in the East Bay Football League.

Photo: Courtesy Tom Coates

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Tom Barenston keeps track of drafted players on a list during the leagues fantasy draft in Fremont, Calif. on Sunday, Sept 8, 2013.

Tom Barenston keeps track of drafted players on a list during the leagues fantasy draft in Fremont, Calif. on Sunday, Sept 8, 2013.

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok, The Chronicle

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Fantasy football knits friends together over years

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Harold Smith's fantasy football league began in 1978, working off mimeographed spreadsheets because no one owned a personal computer.

It continues in honor of original member Robert Veras, who died mid-season a decade ago after a short bout with cancer.

"On Saturday, Robbo's son called and said 'Dad wants to change his receiver to so-and-so,' " Smith remembers. "Robbo died on Monday. He was still working the pool, literally, on his deathbed. He wanted to get his points as high as he could."

Fantasy football reportedly began 50 years ago in Oakland. With such strong ties to fantasy sports, The Chronicle put out a call on The Big Event blog, seeking the Bay Area's greatest fantasy football leagues. The response exceeded expectations, with stories of legendary victories, blunders and quirky/morally questionable draft day traditions. (One local group meets in Las Vegas, where they rent a little person to help with the draft board.)

But the biggest common denominator among the longest-running Bay Area fantasy football leagues is the always complicated, often moving friendships.

On a recent Sunday morning in Fremont, the trash-talking for the Lou & Robbo Gonzo Football League has already started in the garage. Founded by a group of teachers from American High School in Fremont, no one works together any more.

"It's like visiting the old country," says co-founder Laury Fischer, at 65 one of the younger owners. "It's nice to see them again, but we never hang out, except here."

They begin with an annual argument - who was the winner of the league's inaugural year in 1978? The league trophy with a gold casting of a horse's backside, named after Veras and deceased former owner Lou Crittenden, only lists results back to 1984.

"We don't know who won the first year, so everyone claims they did," explains Smith, now 74. "But I know I didn't. I drafted Earl Campbell as my first pick. It was his rookie year. I think I got close to very last in that pool. I didn't realize how important the quarterback was."

The oldest leagues often have the best stories.

Tom Coates co-founded his first league in 1978, using statistics from the newspaper, an Apple II computer and an early spreadsheet program.

"I had to wait for The Chronicle on Monday with the stats," Coates remembers. "I'd look at all the teeny-tiny box scores, and enter them by hand into VisiCalc."

Coates still drafts at the home of an ex-cop and co-founder who lives near San Quentin State Prison. With no fantasy football magazines or Google searches, Coates' league had several pre-Internet era blunders, such as one owner who notoriously tried to draft Roger Staubach ... three years after the quarterback retired.

Coates remembers taking a trip to the Australian Outback early in the league's existence, then learning upon arrival that American football wasn't covered in the newspapers and the single TV channel. He didn't learn of his team's astronomical scoring output until six days after the games played, when he arrived in Sydney and tuned in to an NFL recap show.

"I'll never forget that day," Coates says wistfully. "That was the year I had Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. Montana and Rice connected for five touchdowns against Atlanta. I didn't find out until" the following Sunday.

Fantasy sports date back to at least 1963, when the Greater Oakland Pigskin Prognosticators League, founded by Raiders executives and a local reporter, conducted what is widely considered the first fantasy football draft. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that 33.5 million U.S. residents are playing this year - including 19 percent of the male population. There are dozen of blogs, podcasts and a scripted television show dedicated to the hobby; FXX's "The League" this month entered its fifth season.

The vast majority of those leagues draft online, and often the members are strangers. But for a handful of local leagues, fake sports has turned the group into a band of brothers or sisters.

Mark Kamal's relatively young Dogpile League (established 1998) began in a San Francisco apartment, where Kamal and other fresh-out-of-college league members would watch the games together, dragging coaxial cables up and down the hallways so they could fit a 32-inch television and two 20-inch TVs in the living room.

The Dogpile League was named after what happened when one owner's team scored a touchdown - the other nine guys would jump on top of the recipient of the score. It didn't always end well, especially when the group moved their TVs to a Fort Mason home with a basement and cement floor.

"I jumped on a guy, literally got flung over him and my head skidded across the ground," Kamal remembers. "I had this gnarly wound on my head for a couple of days. I was a consultant. It was a bad look."

Now they watch in Kamal's Orinda home, where he has a 125-inch HD projection screen, accompanied by eight 40-inch televisions so all early NFL games can be watched simultaneously. With some members pushing 40, the dogpiles are fewer and farther between. But the bond is still strong.

"I don't know if it's correlation or causation," Kamal says, "but this is my closest group of friends."

At the Lou & Robbo league draft, a few younger faces mix with the old.

Robert Veras' son Toby was born a year before the league was founded, so fantasy football was a way of life.

"I remember waking up and being so excited to get the newspaper," Veras says. "I'm guessing my dad thought it was a good way to check the scores and practice math at the same time."

Robert Veras was diagnosed with an advanced cancer early summer 2003 and couldn't make the September draft. He sent his son in his place. Toby Veras has been a fixture in the league since. Now a teacher with two children of his own, he recently scaled back his fantasy football leagues from four to two. But he'll always be ready to make his best picks when the Lou & Robbo draft day rolls around.

"My dad's name is on that league. I have so many good memories," Toby Veras says. "I would never, ever, ever give that league up."

For more local fantasy football league coverage, go to Peter Hartlaub's the Big Event blog at blog.sfgte.com/thebigevent.

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